Bloody Sunday as Israel’s Gaza offensive kills 87 Palestinians
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AT least 87 Palestinians were killed across Gaza yesterday as Israel stepped up a major offensive, in the bloodiest single day in the battered enclave in five years.
According to figures provided by emergency services spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra, the total number of Palestinians killed since the Israel operation began on July 8 stood at 425. That number includes 112 children, 41 women and 25 elderly people.
Sixty of yesterday’s victims died in the war-torn neighborhood of Shejaia which lies between Gaza City and the border, where Israel has pressed a blistering offensive, pounding the district to dust and leaving bodies strewn throughout the streets.
Thousands fled for shelter to a hospital packed with wounded.
The Israeli military said militants from Gaza’s dominant Hamas group responded with anti-tank missiles and heavy weapon fire in some of the bloodiest fighting since Israel launched its Gaza offensive 13 days ago.
Thirteen Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting early yesterday, an army spokeswoman said. “Thirteen soldiers from the Golani Brigade were killed in Gaza overnight,” she said without giving further details.
“Since last night, 13 soldiers from the IDF’s Golani Brigade were killed while fighting Hamas terrorists in Gaza,” the army said on its official Twitter feed.
Their deaths raised to 18 the total number of Israeli soldiers killed since the army began a major ground operation in Gaza late last Thursday.
A two-hour “humanitarian cease-fire” in the area, agreed by both sides at the request of the International Committee of the Red Cross, broke down in minutes with each side blaming the other.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel of carrying out a massacre and declared three days of mourning.
The Israeli military said Hamas had fired rockets and built tunnels and command centers in Sheja and that it had warned locals to evacuate two days earlier. Its ground forces were backed up by air strikes and artillery, the army added.
Anguished cries of “Did you see Ahmed?” “Did you see my wife?” echoed through the courtyard of Gaza’s Shifa hospital, where panicked residents of Shejaia gathered in family groups. Inside, bodies and wounded lay on blood-stained floors.
Elderly men there said the Israeli attack was the fiercest they had seen since the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured Gaza.
Shifa hospital’s director Naser Tattar said 17 children, 14 women and four elderly were among the 62 dead, and about 400 people were wounded in the Israeli assault.
Thousands fled Shejaia, some by foot and others piling into the backs of trucks and sitting on the hoods of cars filled with families trying to get away. Several people rode out of the neighbourhood of 100,000 in the shovel of a bulldozer.
As the tank shells began to land, Shejaia residents called radio stations pleading for evacuation. An air strike on the Shejaia home of Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, killed his son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, hospital officials said.
Egypt, Qatar, France and the United Nations, among others, have all been pushing for a permanent cease-fire, with little sign of progress.
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